The Relationship between the Teacher-Child Interaction and Children's Academic Ability:A Three-Level Meta-Analysis
The teacher-child interaction is an important proximal factor affecting children's academic ability,but research results on the relationship between them are controversial.This study is based on 38 empirical studies,406 effect sizes,and 405,769 children aged 3 to 6 years old from the United States,Europe,China,etc.The three-level-meta-analysis technique was used to comprehensively investigate the relationship between the teacher-child interaction(emotional support,classroom organization,instructional support)and children's early academic abilities(language,literacy,and math).The results showed significant but weak correlations between them(r=0.07~0.15);only country had a significant moderating effect,and the correlation degree of Chinese samples was higher than that of foreign samples.Future research may further explore the impact mechanism of teacher-child interaction on children's development from a systematic dynamic and long-term perspective,explore the impact of education quality on children's development from a non-linear perspective,and develop teacher-child interaction quality evaluation tools with Chinese cultural appropriateness and practice-orientation.